PC and Laptop Hard Disk Drives!

Did you know that multinational Hard Disk Drive producers Seagate and Western Digital share over 85% of the market? Correspondingly, the growth or decline in hard drive shipments for desktops and laptops by both Seagate and Western Digital are closely related to global desktop and laptop sales.

Worldwide PC shipments totalled 68 million units in the third quarter of 2022, a 19.5% decrease from the third quarter of 2021, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. This is the steepest market decline since Gartner began tracking the PC market in the mid-1990s and the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline. 

The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) PC market decreased 26.4% year-over-year in the third quarter, reaching 17 million units – the steepest decline among all regions. This is the third negative quarter for the EMEA PC market following a boom at the start of the pandemic.

“Multiple factors led to significant deterioration in the EMEA PC market, including challenging macroeconomic conditions, declining business and consumer demand and high levels of inventory,” said Kitagawa. “Additionally, many PC vendors shuttered operations in Russia in the first two quarters of this year, which negatively impacted overall shipments and is particularly visible across year-to-year comparisons.”

Statista report, In 2021, global unit shipments of hard disk drives (HDDs) fell to 258.9 million units, a 2% fall from the 260.3 million units shipped in the previous year. People are still buying a lot of storage.

Creating Data

Even with PC sales slowing we are all still large consumers of information and we’re buying lots of electronic equipment which includes hard disk drives (HDD) to store business and personal customer data including photos of everything from our kids to bank statements and passwords.

Did you know that 90% of the data on the internet has been created since 2016? This is according to an IBM Marketing Cloud study which suggests individuals, organizations, and devices have all become data creators who are turning out vast amounts of information to the internet daily.

Storage

Today data can be stored on computers, game consoles, external hard drives, mobile phones, tablets, memory cards, memory keys or many other storage devices. Both business and personal data are stored and can be valuable to others. Information like credit card information, photos, email addresses, passwords, address details, medical history and much more.

So if you are upgrading to a new computer device (desktop computer, phone, laptop, tablet, etc.) please arrange for the removal of the hard drive at the same time as recycling the computer!

It’s important to remain mindful of removing, erasing and destroying data which is important to you.

What to Do next?

The key to destroying your computer HDD is ensuring the drive can’t ever spin again. The physical destruction of the drive means increased confidence that stored data is obliterated and can never be used again. This is the method to Recycle IT practice.

In the interest of time and money, you don’t need to destroy the full PC or laptop, just the hard disk drive (HDD) which is a small box inside of a computer, server or laptop.

How to Destroy Hard Disk Drives 

If you are disposing of an old computer with a hard drive, it’s best to physically destroy the hard drive just to be 100% certain that the old data is completely destroyed.

Recycle IT use trained personal and electronic tools to ensure the HDD is physically destroyed. This method is an ideal option for the disposal of home or office hard drives.

Safety in Destruction

Our team takes every precaution from wearing protective goggles, gloves, and a dust mask for the mouth and nose when cutting into the metal drive. They can cut right through the drive, from one side to the other multiple times ensuring the platters and the controller board are shattered.  Recycle IT can also provide destruction and disposal certification depending on your needs.

Finally

No matter who or what method you choose, it’s best to arrange the destruction of old hard drives containing important information before or at the time of recycling your computers, laptops, phones, etc.  Recycle IT offer the service and the opportunity to view the destruction process.

About Recycle IT

Recycle IT is an award-winning, not-for-profit, social enterprise established to create employment and promote environmental awareness through recycling and reuse. We work in partnership with WEEE Ireland and are authorized by your local authority to provide electrical, electronic and pure metal recycling collections across Dublin since 2007. Recycle IT are fully compliant for WEEE collection with permit detail available here.

To speak with Recycle IT please call 01 4578321 or email us here

Visit our website www.recycleit.ie